


head first

by annalyia



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Gift Fic, Implied Sexual Content, Mild Language, Religion, Tags Are Hard, Team Bonding, and a little bit of angst too i guess, not necessarily inexplicit sex but a little bit of, sorry i'm bad at tags i hope you like it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-18 23:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22267945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annalyia/pseuds/annalyia
Summary: a peek into the life of rani shepard.  a gift for anunquenchableflame on tumblr, for the mass effect holiday cheer
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	head first

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hes_per_ides](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes_per_ides/gifts).



> suggested listening is Aquaman by Walk the Moon

“Indrani, please. We both knew this was going to happen, sooner or later.”

Indrani Shepard pinches the bridge of her nose. Yes, she did know this was going to happen, but she _would_ have preferred it was at another time, in another place. Unconsciously, she adjusts the gold bangles at her wrist as she formulates her answer. “Yeah, Isaac,” she eventually replies. “I suppose I did.”

Isaac sighs. “I’m sorry, Rani,” he says, and she can _feel_ the resignation in his voice, the way he sincerely wishes this wasn’t so, but that it has to be. “It just isn’t going to work.”

This time, it’s Rani’s turn to sigh. “I know, I know. I just wish that you’d chosen somewhere else—” she gestures to the fancy restaurant they’re currently occupying, skin lit blue in the light of the fish tanks “—to have this conversation. You really couldn’t have waited?” She grumpily crumples up her napkin and tosses it onto the empty plate in front of her. “I’m really not in the mood to continue this, Isaac,” she snaps. “Can we just say it’s over and that’s that?”

“Really? Are you sure there’s nothing you want to say?” Isaac asks, his genuine surprise showing in his tone.

Rani shrugs. After a pause, she says, “what we had was good, and I don’t regret it. I enjoyed the time we spent together, the memories we have. But, as you know, recently those memories have been more and more over vid, and less and less in person.” Another pause, to see if Isaac will say anything. When he doesn’t, she continues, “but at the same time, I’m not going to ask you to leave the military, or to change your post. I know you love what you do, and so do I. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us to ask the other to give that up.” Isaac nods at that. “And it’s just…it’s getting _hard_ to do this. It’s hard to not be able to see you all the time, to not be able to talk to you freely because someone is always listening in on our conversation.” She sighs again. “It’s just hard.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t,” Isaac tells her, a light laugh in his voice that contains no joy. 

She lets out a snort in reply.

“I’m sorry, Rani,” he repeats. 

“Yeah, me too,” she says.

\-----

Rani Shepard does her absolute best to conceal a grin as Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko fumbles, “there’s no reason they wouldn’t like you. I mean, us. Um. Humans. Ma’am.”

“I appreciate the thought, Alenko, but we’re on duty here.”

“Um, aye, aye, ma’am.”

Ashley nudges Rani as Kaidan awkwardly turns around. Her raised eyebrow lets Rani know that this is a conversation they’re going to have later.

And, oh they do.

“So,” Ashley begins—once they’re back on the _Normandy_ and cleaned up from their mission—with a smirk on her face, “that was interesting.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that, Ash,” Rani says. “Lots of interesting things happened today. For instance, we shot some thugs at a doctor’s office, and met a turian C-Sec officer who’s willing to help us in our investigation into Saren. We also met an… _interesting_ man named Conrad Verner who I think might be just a little bit too into me.”

“Don’t forget that we invaded a, ah, _gentleman’s_ club, and exposed it as just a front for corruption.”

“And we saved a young quarian girl who somehow ended up with more evidence against Saren than we could have hoped to find.”

Ashley grins before adding, “oh, and, don’t forget that the Lieutenant _maybe_ —” she holds out the a for emphasis “—admitted that he likes you.” Her expression is very, _very_ smug as she continues, “not that, y’know, someone could have predicted that or anything.”

“Of course not,” Rani replies drily. 

“Skipper, please. You’re a pretty gal,” Ashley quips. “Besides, he’s not too bad-looking, either.” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively.

Rani snorts in reply, thinking about her past military relationships. Isaac comes to mind first, of course, but she very quickly shoves _those_ feelings back down. “I’ve done military relationships in the past, Ash.” She sighs. “They weren’t necessarily _bad_ , but…hell, I don’t know. They never seem to work out.” She pauses, taking a moment to consider her words. “He _is_ handsome, but at the same time…”

Ashley bumps her hip against Rani’s, doing her best to lighten her commander’s mood. “Just play it out, Shep. If there’s something there, there’s nothing wrong with at least giving it a chance.”

“A chance,” Rani echoes. “Yeah. Maybe.”

\-----

“Have we checked Flux yet, Commander?” Ashley asks as Rani heavily debates punching a wall.

“No,” Rani replies through her teeth. After a deep and calming breath, she goes, “but that would be a good place to start.”

“Who knew looking for keepers would be such a difficult job,” Kaidan muses as he follows behind Rani. 

“I don’t need your sass right now, Lieutenant,” Rani says.

“Oh, it wasn’t meant to be sass, ma’am,” Kaidan says, blushing a little. “That salarian said we needed to scan twenty-one keepers, right?” Both Ashley and Rani nod in affirmation. “How many do we have?”

Rani checks her omni-tool and then groans. “Five. We’ve scanned five keepers.” She sighs angrily, once again eyeing the wall as a target. “Sixteen. We have sixteen more to go.”

“That’s plenty of good bonding time, isn’t it?” Ashley notes lightly with a pointed look at her commander.

A pointed look that Rani does her best to ignore. 

Not that she wouldn’t _mind_ bonding more with the Lieutenant, but she feels a little too frustrated at this moment to have any productive bonding.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes out deeply. This was a fucking stupid quest to take. But she took it, and now she has to finish it. “How about,” she begins slowly, “we go area by area because I, for one, sure as _hell_ don’t want to have to go back to the same places on this god-forsaken station again and again and again. Like, we scanned the first one in the Tower, right? Are we sure we got the rest there?” 

Ashley counts on her fingers for a second. “There were four of them there, right? I mean, we only saw four. And I’d say that we picked that area _pretty clean_ for keepers. So, we can say that that place is done.”

“And we got the one that’s right there,” Kaidan adds with a small, self-satisfied grin, pointing to the keeper they’re standing a few feet from, outside of Dr. Michel’s medical clinic. They’ve done a cursory glance of this section of the wards, and Rani has only seen this one.

It takes effort for Rani to not reflexively copy Kaidan’s grin. Normally, she would get annoyed when someone pointed out the obvious like that, but she can tell that Kaidan means it as a joke, as a way to calm her down.

And it’s cute when he does it.

Not that she would _ever_ let Ashley (or anyone else, for that matter) know.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Ashley says sarcastically.

“I do what I can,” Kaidan replies, grin growing. 

“All right you two, settle down,” Rani jokes. “This is a serious mission and we have to focus.”

“Oh _of course_ , Commander,” Ashley and Kaidan say in unison.

Rani scowls at both of them, but there’s no malice behind it, and it barely masks her smile.

The trio prowls the Wards for more keepers, doing a better job this time, combing each nook and cranny for the strange, insect-like creatures. They find eight more there, although only one of them is in Flux. 

“I could have sworn there would be more in there,” Ashley says as they leave the casino. “With all those machines and people? It seems like there would need to be some extra staff in there.”

“True,” Kaidan replies. “ _But_ , at the same time, the Citadel is a big place, and we don’t know just what the keepers do for it, or how many of them there are.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ashley mutters, curling her lip. “They’re weird.”

“The one up by the _Normandy_ was probably the hardest one to find so far,” Kaidan says. “Like, what was it doing all the way out there?”

“Well, at least we’re up to thirteen keepers,” Rani says, cutting off Kaidan and Ashley’s conversation. “To the presidium?”

They nod.

By the time they find the last keeper—in a sort of balcony in the embassies—Rani and her companions are virtually dead on their feet. 

“This is the stupidest thing we’ve ever agreed to do,” Rani complains as she flops into a chair in the embassies waiting area, close enough to Avina to hear the VI’s greeting message.

“ _We_?” Ashley says incredulously. “ _We_ —” she gestures to herself and Kaidan “—are just following orders. We don’t, technically, _agree_ to anything.”

Rani scowls at Ashley before the two burst into a fit of giggles. “Shut up, Chief,” Rani says. “I do appreciate the help, however.”

“Are the two of you done?” Kaidan says. He’s still standing, and Rani is pretty sure it’s because, were he to sit down, he would never stand up again. A hand unconsciously drifts to his head, rubbing against his forehead to fight a headache. He’s probably hurrying them along so that he can finally relax back on the _Normandy_.

“Yeah, probably,” Rani says before—with much effort—pushing herself up out of her chair and turning on her heel to face Ashley, extending a hand to help her friend up. 

\-----

Kaidan’s bare chest slowly rises and falls with his rhythmic breathing as he sleeps. Rani watches that unconscious movement before shifting her eyes to his face. He’s so… _peaceful_ like this, she notes. The worry lines that normally frame his eyes and forehead and smoothed away, and all his signs of the stress, of the headaches, of the weight of the world he insists upon carrying are gone. 

Rani decides she likes him this way.

Not that she doesn’t like Kaidan when he’s conscious, but there’s something about the peace that he experiences in his sleep that she finds well-deserved. 

Her mind wanders to how she got here, to be able to see Kaidan in this vulnerable state, and she blushes a little. She suppresses a laugh as she thinks that Ashley would—

 _Ash_.

Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Rani feels her good mood quickly fading. An unfortunate thing, given the circumstances, but an understandable one as well.

In order for her to have this, she had to lose something else.

Some _one_ else. 

Was it worth it?

She shakes her head.

There is no “worth it” in this situation, just a split-second decision.

With a gentle hand, Rani caresses Kaidan’s cheek, watching him adjust in his sleep, his body unconsciously seeking hers. 

It’s sweet.

It’s so, so sweet.

\-----

“Um, excuse me, Shepard, but what are you doing?”

Rani starts as she hears a familiar voice. “Tali?” she asks, turning her head to face the speaker.

“Oh, uh, yes! Sorry if I startled you,” the quarian replies. 

Rani shrugs, rotating her head back to the galaxy map. She’s currently seated in front of it, criss cross applesauce, staring out over the whole of known space that’s at her fingertips. “I’m meditating,” she replies, twisting the golden pendant at her neck. Since she’s not _technically_ on duty, she’s wearing one of her simpler necklaces. She didn’t expect anyone else to be awake to see it, either. “It’s something that I try to keep up with, although I can’t say I do a very good job of it.”

“What made you want to meditate this morning?” Tali asks as she carefully folds her legs underneath herself and sits next to Rani. 

Rani shrugs again, almost reflexively. “I’m not sure.”

“Do you meditate for any reason?”

“Religious ones, technically.”

“Oh? You’re religious?”

Rani nods before continuing, “I try to be, yeah. And meditation a big part of Hinduism.”

“Really?” Tali asks.

“Really,” Rani replies, chuckling. 

“Why are you in front of the galaxy map, though?” Tali asks. “Wouldn’t it be better to meditate in your cabin, where you’re sure no one would bother you?”

“No, this is perfect,” Rani replies. “Normally, when we meditate, we use something called a mandala. They’re colorful circles that, in Hinduism at least, are metaphorical images of the universe. We use them to focus and relax, that way the meditation is as fulfilling as it can be, and our heads are not filled with the stresses and worries of the day.” She pauses, fingers rubbing the fabric that forms the edge of her pants pocket. 

Tali tilts her head to the side, noticing the small movement. “Everything all right?”

Rani slips her hand into her pocket, removing a small holo disk. “Yeah, everything is fine. How much do you know about Hinduism?”

“Not very much, I’m afraid.”

“It’s polytheistic,” Rani explains. “Which means there are a lot of different gods with different aspects, each one representing a different trait, a different thing.” She presses a button on the side of the disk, and an image of a many-armed warrior woman riding a tiger appears. “This is Durga,” she says. “She’s a warrior deva, one who fights against the forces that threaten the balance of good and evil in the world.” Rani turns the disk in her hands, watching the rotating deva, her fierce and confident expression. “I…relate to her,” she says gently. “She fights to protect the ones around her—” Rani takes a long look at the galaxy map as she speaks, something that Tali doesn’t miss “—always strong, confident, and sure of herself and her mission. She knows what and who she’s fighting for.” Rani’s voice softens, falls as she says this last part, her reticence attempting to hide her emotional whirlwind. 

Tali pauses, digesting the conversation. “Are you sure you don’t know why you’re meditating this morning?”

“I…” Rani begins, completely and utterly unsure. “I feel lost,” she eventually finishes. “We stopped Sovereign and the geth and Saren. And now we’re being sent out on bullshit missions that are just for looks, no matter what the brass says. There are no more geth to clean up, no more reapers to stop for the time being. There’s nothing, and we’re doing nothing.” She says this last part angrily, her frustration clear. “We should be preparing more. We should be prepping our defenses and our people for when the reapers try to strike again. Because they’re going to. We only stopped them temporarily. Instead, we’re sitting around, acting like nothing happened, acting like the threat is over, and doing _absolutely fucking nothing_.” After a long pause—Tali says nothing, knowing that Rani needs a moment to let her words sit in the air and in her mind— Rani says, “meditating helps me focus. It helps me straighten out my worries and aches and pains. It reminds me of a higher purpose and of the balance of the universe; how I might be frustrated, but that this is happening for a reason. Believe me, I’m still pissed as hell about it,” she adds with a laugh, “but it helps me make sure that that doesn’t bleed into my social interactions and my leadership role.”

Tali nods. “I get that,” she says. “Well, maybe not that _exactly_ , but I understand being frustrated. My father and the other admirals can be bosh’tets more often than not, refusing to acknowledge a way other than what they see. It’s times like that when I miss the hum of the engines from the ships in the Fleet. They would give me something to focus on when I felt overwhelmed.”

Rani smiles at Tali, glad to have a friend in the girl. 

There’s another pause, this one more tranquil than the last.

“Rani?” Tali asks shyly.

“Yes?”

“Would you mind if I joined you?”

“Not at all.”

\-----

Rani could scream.

Wants to, really.

But she can’t.

There are too many people around, too many people hovering, asking if she’s okay, if she needs anything.

_How could he say that?_

That question plays on repeat in her head.

_“You turned your back on everything we believed in.”_

Did she?

Rani, in her heart of hearts, disagrees.

She believes in saving people, in helping them. She believes in stopping the Reapers.

That’s what she’s doing.

Sure, she’s _technically_ working with Cerberus—her hand unconsciously wanders to the Cerberus insignia that she’s scratched off of her current shirt—and they’ve has done some pretty sketchy and shitty things in the past that she absolutely does not support or condone, but this is good. And this is more _her_ mission than the Illusive Man’s anyway.

She is _not_ Cerberus.

No matter what anyone says.

Rani retreats to her cabin, throwing out excuses of how she just needs a nap and then she’ll be ready to go.

As the door slides open, she’s greeted by loud and angry squeaks from her hamster. She gives a tired smile as she grabs a container from the shelf under its cage, opens the lid, and pours some food in its bowl. Closing the cage, she turns to her fish and presses the button that releases their food into the water. Turning back around—

 _There_.

On her desk—

Her heart catches in her throat, and angry tears well in her eyes. Purposefully, Rani marches over to her desk and slams the holo photo of Kaidan face-down.

But the image is still caught in her mind.

He’s not quite smiling, but his face isn’t as stoic as it could be either. He’s wearing his armor because it’s a quick shot that she got in between missions before—

She wipes at the tears before they fall, _refusing_ to let them fall.

She will not cry over him.

She checks her email, desperately trying to change the subject.

Her gaze falls upon an email from Admiral Hackett.

 _Our scans in the Armada system have turned up something we thought you should see: the final location of the wreckage of the SSV Normandy_. 

Something she can do alone.

After the shuttle, which makes too much noise for such a quiet place, lands, Rani observes the planet around her.

Ice.

It’s a frozen wasteland, littered with pieces of her ship.

With just the sound of her breathing and the wind to occupy her, Rani walks the crash site. As Admiral Hackett requested, she finds the dog tags of her missing crewmen. Even if he hadn’t asked, it’s what she would have done. She owes it to them. None of them survived, and she did, even if she shouldn’t have.

Satisfied that she has picked the place clean, Rani hesitates placing the statue in front of the main piece of her ship, reading _SSV Normandy_ again and again and again, until the letters no longer look right together. 

_This isn’t fair_ , she thinks, and her anger grows from that simple statement.

Those angry tears appear in her eyes again, and she does not stop them.

This is not fair.

Why did all those good people die?

Why did the Collectors single her out?

Why is she still here?

What did she do that made her so much more special than the dead that surround her?

Why was she unable to save more people on Horizon?

Why the _fuck_ did Kaidan say what he did?

She pulls her holo disk out of a pocket on the side of her armor. She’s not entirely sure why she brought it with her, to be honest. But she presses the button on the side anyway, and Durga flashes to life, all arms and ferocity and confidence. 

Taking a deep breath, Rani focuses.

Good and evil.

Balance.

Everything happens for a reason.

She is here because she can help, because she can fight for those who cannot defend themselves.

She will prove that to everyone.

\-----

Rani is standing outside the door to a room in the Huerta Memorial Hospital on the Citadel.

Behind said door is Major Kaidan Alenko.

He’s not conscious, according to the doctors, but he _is_ breathing, and he is expected to wake up.

She takes a deep breath.

So much has happened.

It was supposed to be just another day.

But, she considers, this day was also long-expected.

 _The Reapers_.

They’re finally here.

It’s not the total, quick annihilation that she’d expected.

Here, on the Citadel, you wouldn’t even know there’s a war going on, that millions and millions of people had already died or been harvested. The only evidence is in the people around her in this hospital. The doctors all have tired or worried expressions, hurrying along and carting around more soldiers than usual. 

Everything just happened so quickly.

It was supposed to be just another day. 

But then she was watching Reapers land all around her, watching her friends and fellow soldiers die, having Anderson throw her dog tags, being sent to Mars by Hackett on some mission that she still wasn’t really sure was worth it.

At least she found Liara.

James is good as well, even if he _is_ too head-strong and dangerous for his own good.

And there’s—

She brings her eyes to the door again. 

It still hasn’t opened.

There was…tension between them, which she knows is to be expected. Even with his email, she knows they didn’t exactly end Horizon on very good terms, and from everything he said on Mars, he’s still unsure of her allegiances, even if she isn’t. Rani swallows the lump in her throat. She’s completely aware that he’s not awake, that he probably won’t even know that she visited, but she’s still… _nervous_. 

Does he even want her here?

Her mind wanders back to all the times Kaidan told her he loved her. Be it whispered in her ear, against her forehead after a kiss, with a wry smile, lazily from across her cabin, with his lips against hers and his hands at her hips as he hungers for more.

Her expression softens at that thought. At his love. It has always been simple and easy and _true_. And, despite everything that has happened, Rani chooses to believe that it is still there.

She opens the door.

\-----

Rani wakes up. She doesn’t move at first, not entirely sure if she can, everything in the past…however long a complete blur. The most she does is crack open one eye—difficult, she notices, after not much use—and takes in the room around her. Jack and Miranda are speaking in low voices to each other in one corner; Tali is curled up on a couch, datapad in hand; Garrus is pacing at the foot of her bed; Kaidan is leaned back in a chair to the side of her bed, arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed.

“G’mornin,” she mumbles, voice thick and throat raw. 

Everyone in the room starts, turning towards the sound.

“Shepard?” Miranda is the first to speak. A hand covers her mouth and she runs up to the side of Rani’s bed.

Rani’s throat hurts too much to say anything else, so she tests nodding her head. That hurts too, but she thinks she gets the point across.

All at once, everyone else in the room lets out a collective breath of air; not necessarily a sigh, but not quite a sob either.

There are so many words.

Jack and Miranda, working together for once, as far as Rani can tell, praising their work despite the odds; Tali babbling on and on and on about how she can’t believe Rani is finally awake; Garrus saying how he knew that she was too much of a tough asshole to just die like that.

Kaidan, on the other hand, isn’t speaking.

His lips are slightly parted, and his eyes are shining. He raises a hand to her cheek, an action that he has done countless times before but somehow means more this time than any other, and smiles.

It’s a real smile, one quickly followed by a huff of a laugh. “Hey,” he whispers, voice husky and chock full of all sorts of emotions that Rani does not have names for. 

“Hey,” Rani says, immediately regretting the pain but not the act. She does her best to lean into his hand, gritting her teeth at the stretch in her sore muscles. 

“You scared the shit out of us, Shep,” Jack says, getting right to the point once she’s sure Rani is coherent enough. “The Alliance was one-hundred percent ready to let you die, but Cheerleader here and I decided that was a fucking dumb idea.”

“Eloquent as always, Jack,” Miranda quips. “But she gets the point across. Besides, I’ve already brought you back to life before, and, this time, you weren’t even technically dead yet. Child’s play, really.” The sarcastic grin Miranda flashes is delicate, her banter obviously hiding her overwhelming relief. Rani can tell that Miranda was not sure if she could do the impossible twice.

But Rani is glad that she did.

\-----

Fingers massaging her temples, Rani says testily, “I _know_ I left the Alliance because I was tired of all the bullshit, Kaidan. I marched in there because there’s not a damn way I would ever represent the Alliance again. They stopped caring about me as soon as I had outlived my usefulness.”

“And you don’t think there will be bullshit with this either?” Kaidan replies. He’s perched on the arm of the couch in their apartment on the Citadel—not Anderson’s apartment, no, that never felt enough like home—so as to better watch her pace around the living room. “There’s bullshit in everything.”

“ _I know_ ,” Rani snaps again. She sighs, knowing that this argument will get them nowhere. “But, at the same time,” she begins, in a calmer tone this time, “the humans need someone who will be on their side.”

“And I’m not saying you wouldn’t be, Rani,” Kaidan says softly. “I’m just asking if you’re going to be able to put up with everything that being the Human Councilor requires.”

“I put up with you,” she mutters, but there’s no malice behind it and it makes Kaidan smile.

“Yes, and you’re a saint for doing so,” Kaidan quips. “But seriously. You marched into what was left of Alliance HQ with your resignation as soon as the doctors told you that you were cleared to walk that far. You said you were done with the bureaucracy.”

“ _I know_ ,” Rani repeats for a third time. “This is not exactly how I’d imagined my future either.”

“What did you have in mind instead?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” she says. “Just…something—more—I don’t know— _normal_ than this.” She waves a hand flippantly in the air. “I know that sounds stupid, but that’s what I was hoping for. A house that I own that stays in one place, a husband, maybe even some kids.”

“A husband?” Kaidan asks. “Didn’t know that was part of the plan.” He pauses as he stands, a hand moving to scratch at his chin. “Married, huh? Got anyone in mind?”

“Yes,” Rani answers immediately, no other option in her thoughts. She locks eyes with Kaidan, feeling a blush build in her cheeks, but also refuses to back down. Not about this. She raises a tentative eyebrow at him.

“Yes,” he says. 

The tension leaves both their bodies immediately, their shoulders dropping. Kaidan purposefully strides over to Rani before placing his hands firmly on her hips and pressing his lips softly against hers. “Yes,” he says again, much gentler this time, almost like he’s unsure if saying that word will shatter the balance between them.

“Yes,” Rani whispers against his lips, her anger from before dulled by this moment. 

They kiss again, this one longer than the last, before making eye contact again. 

“I still think I’m going to take them up on that Council position,” Rani says.

“I doubt I could stop you,” Kaidan replies. Rani knows that he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, just that she’s determined. 

And she is.

Determined, that is.

About a lot of things. 

One of which, she realizes as she gives Kaidan another peck on the lips, is loving this man for the rest of her life. 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! i had a fantastic time learning about and writing for rani, and i hope that i did her justice :)
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are my lifeblood and i will, in fact, die for them


End file.
